Popular quotes about American! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 18
... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom.
Edward SaidWe will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true. Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world, and today, we are like a third-world country. We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best, and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation.
Donald TrumpI didn't want to be on screen not nailing an American accent. It's an insult to an American! There are plenty of great American actors who can already do an American accent, so me, coming in and stealing their roles, the one thing I have to perfect is the accent. So for years I practiced. And we're lucky because the whole world is raised on a library of American movies. I would pretend to be Jim Carrey, and, I say Robin Williams now because he's in my mind, but those actors really inspired us to be crazy and be theatrical.
Brenton ThwaitesSo after a long time of utilizing the American propaganda machine, along with official statements of lies, distortion and falsehood, the focus was basically turned on inciting the American public against Iraq and pushing them to accept the American administration's schemes of aggression as a fait accompli, as if it were the solution or the necessary rescue that would allow American citizens to live in security and stability, after what they had gone through in the September 11 attacks.
Naji SabriDoes people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.
Hanya YanagiharaThe American man is a very simple and cheap mechanism. The American woman I find a complicated and expensive one. Contrasts of feminine types are possible. I am not absolutely sure that there is more than one American man.
Henry AdamsI can tell you that too much money is corrupting American politics. Don't blame the American public. The U.S. Supreme Court has a lot to answer for, because it has made it impossible for Congress to reduce the corrupting influence of money on American political life.
Peter SingerI want to say unequivocally that while I cherish every person who comes from anywhere, who comes here legally and seeks to pursue happiness, and I hope all of them decide to stay and become American citizens, but I want them to become American. And part of becoming American involved English. It is vital historically to assert and establish that English is the common language at the heart of our civilization.
Newt GingrichThe American people have on many occasions been willing to shed their own blood for a noble cause, like when hundreds of thousands of Americans participated in the fight against fascism in Europe, and other causes. There are many good people there, and the Cuban people know the American people, we have many examples of solidarity from the American people in every stage of the Cuban people's fight for independence.
Alejandro Castro EspinMy grandfather always told me, You know youre American first, but youre a Greek-American, which makes you a better American. It sounds sort of old-world and very sweet, but what he meant was that you should embrace those things that are most special and different about you.
Melina KanakaredesThis is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.
Mark ShieldsI'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American.
John RechyTrump and I have a lot in common, and that is a belief in the American dream because we both have lived it. I think it's what animates our president-elect more than anything else, is a belief in the boundless potential of every American to live the American dream. And, I think it comes from the fact that we both grew up in it, and both saw it. And in our own ways, we both lived it.
Mike PenceBut you have to understand, American democracy is not like the system you have. We're not an ocean liner that sails across the ocean from point A to point B at 30 knots. That's not American democracy. American democracy is kind of like a life raft that bobs around the ocean all the time. Your feet are always wet. Winds are always blowing. You're cold. You're wet. You're uncomfortable -- but you never sink.
Colin PowellI always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors. I always had this very strong love and respect for the American cinema. I always knew that I was going to leave Sweden.
Noomi RapaceThe New World Order is a more palatable name for the Anglo American world empire. It's the planetary domination of London, New York, Washington over the rest of the world. It's hard to get people to join that or think they have a part in it if you called it the Anglo American world empire. If you call it the New World Order, then people in India or some place like that or the European Union might think, "Well, there's something there for us too." But that's not what it is; it's the Anglo American New World Order.
Alex JonesOur highest ambition is to be included in the stream of American life, to be permitted to "play the game" as any other American; and is opposed to anything that aids in the exclusion; the face may be Africa, but the heart has the beat of Wall Street.
Chester HimesThe American people know that we need - America needs - to be strong for the world to be safe and for the American people to be safe, and that will happen when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States.
Mike PenceThese self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and any broad literary stroke with outright hate. The result is a strange and arid literary climate where a meaningless little fingernail paring like Nicholson Baker's Vox becomes an object of fascinated debate and dissection, and a truly ambitious American novel like Matthew's Heart of the Country is all but ignored.
Stephen King[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is what has made it a great American novel and the most widely read book in American Literature around the world today.
Hal HolbrookDonald Trump has a grand direction. He doesn't have a grand strategy. He wants to re-establish American authority and power and to relaunch the American economy.
Newt GingrichWe want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency - clear disinterested thinking and fearless action
Woodrow WilsonThe writer in me can look as far as an African-American woman and stop. Often that writer looks through the African-American woman. Race is a layer of being, but not a culmination.
Thylias MossAs a first-generation "Asian American woman," for one thing, I knew there was no such thing as an "Asian American woman." Within this homogenizing labeling of an exotica, I knew there were entire racial/national/cultural/sexual-preferenced groups, many of whom find each other as alien as mainstream America apparently finds me.
Shirley Geok-lin LimI discovered myself in the back-and-forth and in the hyphenated Arab-American way, and one of the things that I discovered was that I really didn't fit in anywhere. So in the US, I was considered an Arab - because I grew up in small-town Ohio - and in the Middle East, I was considered the American.
Cherien DabisAs a Chinese American legislator, I applaud the RNC's Growth and Opportunity Project. Engaging Asian American and Pacific Islander communities about Republican principles is a worthwhile effort. I thank Chairman Priebus and Co-Chairman Day for making this a priority. We need to ensure our message of growth and opportunity is being heard in all communities throughout this nation, and I am proud to be a part of this effort.
Kimberly YeeWe Jews have put issue upon issue to the American people. Then we promote both sides of the issue as confusion reigns. With their eye's fixed on the issues, they fail to see who is behind every scene. We Jews toy with the American public as a cat toys with a mouse.
Harold Wallace RosenthalPainters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.
Donald BarthelmeThe American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution.
Benjamin RushSteve Bannon is the architect of the entire blitzkrieg that we're seeing against American values and the American people.
Van JonesI am quite aware that a distinction must be drawn between the American government and the American people.
Mahmoud AhmadinejadDuring the Reagan eighties, the idea that money was a good thing - it was good to be rich; that wealth was a reflection of your character. We see this today in perceptions of Donald Trump: the idea that money is an expression of success and even goodness. I compare that with my dad's generation, where the American Dream was about giving your kids a better life, but not just in material terms. The American Dream was also about doing something good in the world. The home was at the center of the dream, but home also represented community, shelter, and stability for your family.
Lauren GreenfieldPresident Obama is the most successful food stamp president in American history. I would like to be the most successful paycheck president in American history.
Newt GingrichIt is imperative that young white men and women study the black American history. It is imperative that blacks and whites study the Asian American history.
Maya AngelouJournalists become candidates for cardiac arrest when they see or hear an African American disagreeing with an African American. We would become inauthentic if we did not have disagreements with this president.
John ConyersI come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.
Annie IlonzehI'm a third-generation American, so I like that American-looking, Northwestern style with a flannel or jean shirt.
Cody HornI'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers don't have that. They don't have that opportunity, they don't have that.
James McBrideTogether, we will have one great American future. Our potential is unlimited. We will be one people, under one God, saluting one American flag.
Donald TrumpIn my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report.
Frederick SeitzAnd it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity - it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.
Jim CliftonWe can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.
Roger EbertI believe that the gospel and the American Dream have fundamentally different starting points. The American Dream begins with self, exalts self, says you are inherently good and you have in you what it takes to be successful so do all you can, work with everything you have to make much of yourself. The gospel begins with God, the reality that we were created to exalt his name to the ends of the earth.
David PlattAt bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
John Paul Stevens